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N E W M U S I C C O N N O I S S E U R

Volume 22, No. 1 Spring 2016

THE BABBITT CENTENARY page 5

+ LIVE PERFORMANCES

++ ESSAYS

magazine NMC_Draft 4_Spring16.indd 1 8/16/16 9:53 AM

NEW MUSIC CONNOISSEUR | 22

In the first ACA Bulletin published in 1938, the “Aims of the Alliance” were stated as: “To encourage the inclusion of American works in concerts.”

The approach to fostering performances of these American works over time has been to leverage ACA’s ability to provide access to its scores through publishing and distribution services.

Access to scores and performance mate-rials is fundamental. Musicians need per-formance materials quickly, and they need them in formats that are clean, ready to use, and economically priced.

The American Composers Alliance (ACA) was formed in 1937 by Aaron Copland, Elliott Carter, Marc Blitzstein, Colin McPhee, Douglas Moore, Marion Bauer, and others, and began collecting scores of its member composers in the early 1940s.

The original mission was to make the music available to orchestras and per-formers, and to be sure that composers were compensated fairly and credited for performances of their work

Over the years, the collection has grown to more than 12,000 pieces, the earliest from 1905, and for every year thereafter to the present.

ACA accepted music from composers under-represented in the mainstream at that time.

ACA also welcomed, and still does, un-usual, and smaller or lesser-known works by well-known composers that were not considered lucrative enough for commer-cial publication by other publishers.

Since 2000, ACA has managed its col-

lection of scores and parts in collaboration with the University of Maryland’s Special Collections in Performing Arts (SCPA).

In 2010, after an inventory of all scores was completed, we turned our atten-tion to processing the archival historical files—the official records of ACA. This ongoing project is now online at http://hdl.handle.net/1903.1/30672

The official papers of ACA include all related materials that were produced in establishing, building, and running the organization from the 1930s through the 1990s.

The relationship between ACA and SCPA is a unique one, encompassing the normal functions of a music publisher as well as a music archive. For a number of years SCPA has acted as custodian for ACA scores and parts.

SCPA makes ACA scores available ac-cording to normal library policy, but it also makes them available to ACA for digital scanning.

At ACA, we wish to preserve the ma-terials entrusted to us as part of our his-tory for tomorrow’s generations. We could not have moved forward in this mission without the support of SCPA and the University of Maryland Libraries. When I first began working at ACA in the beginning of 2008, I knew about its historic publishing catalog, but I didn’t know what had happened to it. I learned that in early 2000, due to budget cuts, all of the scores had been moved from ACA’s longtime New York offices to Special Collections in Performing Arts at

The American Composers Alliance music catalog and archives: A collaborative effort between ACA, BMI, and the University of MarylandBy Gina Genova

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the University of Maryland (SCPA).My predecessors at ACA had made

the remarkable decision to partner with a library. They transported ten thousand scores from New York to Maryland in var-ious formats: single side printing masters – the ozalid onionskins, copies, a collec-tion of printed and bound scores for pe-rusal, super oversized scores, operas, reel to reel tapes and many sets of printed and bound “rental” orchestra parts.

Initially I discovered two incredible as-sets to build on. ACA still held publish-ing rights for most of the scores through its affiliation with Broadcast Music Inc. (BMI), and the physical scores and parts were still owned by ACA under an expired library deposit agreement.

Because the score collection had been sitting mostly unused in Maryland be-tween 2000 and 2008, my first goal was to create interest that would draw more people to it – and encourage not only further study of this repertoire, but also performances and recordings.

I wanted to convey to the university and SCPA the value of the collection that they had inherited, but in my role as ACA Director, I also wanted to provide more benefit – promotion and publicity – for the American composers it represented.

When I first arrived at the tiny ACA of-fice at 648 Broadway, I found a daunting stack of unprocessed purchase orders that had been coming in— requests for scores, parts, and mechanical licenses from mu-sicians, record companies, stores and re-sellers around the world.

I imagined that if ACA had a better way to make the scores more widely available and to properly represent the rights it still held, more people would discover and use the collection. We began by updating the website and working together with SCPA staff to create an inventory that listed ev-erything that had been shipped to Mary-land.

ACA needed access to the score and parts printing masters at SCPA, to scan and provide copies on demand for per-formers, and to establish a digital distribu-tion collection of scores for the future. It also needed an expandable database where large amounts of information could be stored, edited, and retrieved by ACA and library staff.

Creating an online listing and offering newly printed and digital editions made from the score masters seemed to me the best way to make direct connections with performers and knowledgeable research-ers, to encourage performances, and to

build greater respect for the collection.*****The birth of ACA marked a turbulent

period in U.S. music history. The late 1930s to the early 40s is fascinating-ly well-documented in the letters of the ACA founders, the manuscripts of which are now at SCPA.

There is a great American story about business and creative enterprise waiting to be told about ACA and its history. Untapped primary sources of all kinds

lie within the official papers, correspon-dence, archives and scores.


EssaysMusic from the earliest days: Weigl–Five Songs from Phantasus (1905) and more current, Louis Karchin– Barcarole Variations (2015)



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The original, lofty goal of Aaron Cop-land was to establish the right for all com-posers to receive income when their music was performed.

Initially, ACA gave its attention to American composers not otherwise pro-tected by the older performing rights soci-ety, ASCAP. In essence, ACA began as an alternative rights society, but it would re-quest and collect licensing fees from pre-senters of concert music by living com-posers. This had never been done before.

In 1940, ASCAP was collecting as much as four million dollars a year in rev-enue for its songwriters and composers, but this was from radio station broadcast-ing fees (New York Times, Dec. 15, 1940; T. R. Kennedy “Radio Revamping Old Favorites”). Now, presenters would have to pay for the right to perform music in a symphony hall if the music was not in the public domain. This was a hard sell in some circles (and still is).

After much litigation and a stormy period of time, the radio broadcasters organized themselves and set up BMI to license radio rights to their own catalog. The problem was, they didn’t have one. They had to build it from scratch. They began by buying broadcasting rights to music that was not registered to ASCAP, which soon brought BMI together with ACA composers for like-minded reasons.

Since the early 1940’s ACA composers had been trying to join ASCAP, without success.

At the time these letters (pictured on previous page) were written, ACA Direc-tor Harrison Kerr was still hopeful that ACA composers might be accepted under the ASCAP umbrella. Up to this time, ASCAP had offered its membership only to a select few ACA composers, includ-ing Aaron Copland, Douglas Moore, and Marc Blitzstein.

ASCAP had said “maybe” to the idea of taking all ACA composers and kept ACA leaders on the hook for several years. When the deal fell through decisively and there was no chance for all ACA members to join into ASCAP as a group, Copland was justifiably concerned, and letters in the ACA collection at SCPA contain much information on the complexity of the issue of dual memberships in ACA and AS-CAP.

It was not until 1944 that Harrison Kerr established the agreement between ACA and BMI in which the broadcast-ers would collect performance royalties for concerts in ad-dition to the radio broadcast rights for the music in the ACA catalog. This is how

BMI initially started its classical music di-vision. With periodic renegotiations, this relationship between American Compos-ers Alliance and BMI remains, more or less, in force today.

From its inception, ACA seems to have

had a bit of an identity crisis. I believe we are still very much working to clarify the image of what ACA is and does. There were multiple, simultaneous missions over the years.



In the 1940s and 50s, Aaron Copland and other ACA composers worked with the US Information Agency and traveled to other countries in support of American music concerts and promoting American culture.

In the 1950s, ACA leaders established a live concert series presented at the Mu-seum of Modern Art, curated by Leop-old Stokowski and broadcast on WNYC (see photo bottom-right, from left: tenor William Hess with ACA members Peggy Glanville-Hicks, Jacob Avshalomov, and Henry Brant). In addition, the record company CRI was founded by ACA —as well as the American Composers Orches-tra in the 1970s. Each of these branched

off and became separate successful enti-ties.

Oliver Daniel, an important and col-orful character in music publishing, in 1951, inaugurated for ACA the presti-gious Laurel Leaf Award.

It was given by the ACA Board of Gov-ernors in a ceremony almost every year

to an individual or organization for their “distinguished service in fostering Ameri-can music.” (on bottom of previous page,

1969, from left ACA President John Les-

sard, with award recipients Charles Wuo-rinen and Harvey Sollberger, on behalf of the Group for Contemporary Music).

Sharing the award in 1959 were chore-ographer Martha Graham and comedian

Jack Benny. (Photo top of previ-ous page, 1959, Martha Graham with ACA composer Robert Ward)

Jack Benny (middle of previous page) was honored by ACA for his fundraising efforts for Amer-ican orchestras through perform-ing his comedy

sketches and playing the violin. He is pictured with his piano accompanist Richard Nixon (at left) who was Vice-President of the United States at that time, and ACA President Ben Weber (right) presenting him with the Laurel Leaf award.

Oliver Daniel also revived the publication ACA Bulletin (see cover images on next page)

through the 1950s and 60s. Within the ACA archives at SCPA, you

will find not only thousands of music score masters, but also files with text per-missions for lyrics, composers’ writings, and various photos of events, correspon-dence and business of the founders and

members of ACA over the years.What was an appropri-

ately flexible rights agreement between composer and publisher in the middle 20th century has again become viable.

In recent years, music publishers in the U.S. have been closing and/or reducing staff and services, or they’ve been absorbed by larger companies who pick and choose the works they will continue to support, especially for contempo-rary music. Titles easily go out of print. The task of disseminating and archiving composers’ music has become ever more important.

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Lou Harrison’s Prospectus for Musicians (1957) p.1, and a letter from ACA member Henry Cowell, requesting a transfer of rights for three of his ACA works

over to Associated Music Publishers.

Text permission

letter from Langston Hughes for com-poser Hale Smith; Telegram from Deems Taylor to Aaron Copland at the start of

ACA activities in 1938.



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. . .What is ACA’s mission today? Is it a publisher?

Yes, but composers do not assign their copyright – they merely grant certain ex-clusive and nonexclusive rights to ACA for a period of time that can be forever, or they can revoke.

Is it a licensing organization? Yes, but composers can, if they want, license their own recordings and dramatic perfor-mances.

Is it an arts organization? Not really. It’s an incorporated business that controls legal limited rights of many individual works and has a fiduciary responsibility to its composers.

A nonprofit since 2009, ACA is not owned by any one person or its Board of Governors– it’s owned collectively by its members and any surplus of income needs to be recycled back into its programs and mission.

ACA’s 75th anniversary in 2012 was celebrated with a concert at Symphony Space, featuring the League of Composers Orchestra.

Will the ACA Archives at SCPA be the last stop for the music collection?

How can a group like ACA stay relevant into the future?

Two thoughts:1. Even with social media and web-

sites, there is still a huge body of American composers’ work that isn’t likely to be found in music stores, libraries, stream-ing or for sale online, or heard in performances and recordings, if representative advocates do not take responsibility and care for it. ACA provides publish-ing services and score access for composers who want more than self-publishing, but also to retain a level of ownership and control over their music; as well as ser-

vices for composers who have no interest or skills to get their mu-sic into mainstream markets.

See excerpt below, from “Building Mu-sic Scores Collections in the World of Web-Based, Self-Publishing Composers”, a paper by Kent Underwood (NYU) pre-sented at IAML Congress 2015:

“Regardless of a composer’s rea-sons for conducting [his or] her career outside the traditional chan-nels of commercial publishing and distribution, the routines that librar-ies typically follow to identify and purchase new scores are clearly not well-connected to self-publishing individuals. The result is that a siz-able quantity of significant contem-porary music is falling through the cracks. And those cracks seem to be widening. The danger, long term, is that libraries will miss the opportu-nity to preserve and document the musical culture of our time faithful-ly for posterity.”2. The original plan of ACA as a

flexible rights organization that handles some aspects of publish-ing and shares other rights and chores with its composers seems win-win for both sides. This was set up so that composers could

leave ACA if they were signed to a commercial publisher, or if any of their particular works were chosen for more mainstream publication by larger companies.

Examples of composers who joined ACA and then moved on to bigger pub-lishers include John Cage in the late 1940s, Henry Cowell and Elliott Carter in the 50s. Leslie Bassett, Charles Wuo-rinen and Joan Tower in the late 60s. These composers moved on from ACA, but each left many early works to con-tinue being published and distributed by ACA.

Other composers joined ACA perma-nently and established a custodial agree-ment for the continued distribution of and access to their music after their death – Miriam Gideon, Ben Weber, Otto Lu-ening, Karl Weigl, Robert Helps, and nearly 100 others have many scores with ACA, earning performance royalties for the organization until it closes, or until the works are in the public domain. ACA continues to print on request some of the earliest works in the catalog that are likely no longer in copyright.

The current business model of licensing – allocating bits and pieces of your copy-right to different companies for specific purposes is the foundation of how the

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Image above: Tuba-Tuba (1973) by Burr Van Nostrand – example of a composer whose work has enjoyed a substantial renaissance since 2012, largely due to the efforts between SCPA, New England Conservatory Library, and ACA, with his ACA scores now listed online and

print on request services available to performers.



music business benefits songwriters and composers. ACA, in licensing, but not owning copyrights, has been ahead of oth-er concert music publishers in this respect.

I see the potential of ACA as a valuable resource, a necessary extension of tradition-al publishing. Even though the composers may be prolific, writing in multiple genres, the requests coming in are for specific piec-es, often ‘one-off’ copies. Publishers with a ‘for profit’ structure have a difficult time managing small requests on the one hand, and libraries don’t want to do the work of publishers, on the other. ACA can provide these services with the support it receives from BMI, from fundraising, and through licensing and selling music, if it is managed carefully.

The structure of ACA is a great oppor-tunity for music business students, archi-vists, and music librarians in training. In our “connected age” , composer members around the country are helping to manage aspects of their ACA collective together.

What does the future hold? Managing more and more members re-

quires an administrative infrastructure that siphons funding away from creative proj-ects. This is an ongoing problem for many smaller nonprofits.

This is where SCPA has been so valuable. ACA could not have shouldered the costs on its own for the storage of score masters and the professional care they have re-ceived for the past 15 years.

The support from SCPA and BMI has absolutely saved ACA—it’s that simple. ACA is now fully functioning to distribute works from its vast music catalog on re-quest to individual performers and ensem-bles, and also to specialty re-sellers such as Theodore Front Musical Literature and Harrassowitz Booksellers, among others.

ACA score sales have increased exponen-tially as have performance royalties earned from our catalog at BMI since 2009, but also important to note is that making the collection more visible has resurrected works otherwise forgotten. ACA has also

welcomed more than 30 new or returning member composers, expanding the collec-tion considerably in the past 5 years.

In addition to establishing the status of the physical ownership of all of the materi-als, ACA is currently working with SCPA on an agreement to make available a collec-tion of more than 4,000 digital scores and parts to students around the world. Our PDF collection continues to grow by the day – as we scan more of the older score masters at SCPA and also receive deposits of new works from current composers in born-digital format.

In developing a process of electronic ac-cess to ACA scores, SCPA and ACA both have acknowledged that the needs and in-terests of an archive are not always congru-ent with the needs and interests of a pub-lisher or performance library.

We intend to continue our collaboration with SCPA, working together so that these scores by American composers will remain available in a shared database with access to materials for researchers and also per-formers.

We keep moving forward with our digi-

tal preservation program so that scores can remain widely available beyond our own lives.

( This essay is an edited version of a paper presented at The International Association of Music Libraries and Documentation Centres (IAML) and the International Musicological Society (IMS), June 2015).

Correspondence of Aaron Copland used by permission of the Aaron Copland Fund for Music, Inc.

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NEW MUSIC CONNOISSEUR - Amazon Web Services · Copland, Elliott Carter, Marc Blitzstein, Colin McPhee, Douglas Moore, Marion Bauer, ... 27 | NEW MUSIC CONNOISSEUR In the 1940s and